I’m fairly certain we’ve discussed the Conservative Bible Project before. I guess I’m a little surprised by some of the winger complaints about teh librully biased regular Bible:
For example, the conservative word “volunteer” is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word “comrade” is used three times, “laborer(s)” is used 13 times, “labored” 15 times, and “fellow” (as in “fellow worker”) is used 55 times.
I get why they don’t like “comrade”. But what’s wrong with “laborer”? And aren’t “volunteers” kind of like “community organizers” when you get right down to it?
This is even more mystifying:
identify terms that have lost their original meaning, such as “word” in the beginning of the Gospel of John, and suggest replacements, such as “truth”.
[….]prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”
[…..]At Luke 16:8, the NIV describes an enigmatic parable in which the “master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” But is “shrewdly”, which has connotations of dishonesty, the best term here? Being dishonestly shrewd is not an admirable trait.
The better conservative term, which became available only in 1851, is “resourceful”. The manager was praised for being “resourceful”, which is very different from dishonesty. Yet not even the ESV, which was published in 2001, contains a single use of the term “resourceful” in its entire translation of the Bible.
Does shrewd really have more connotations of dishonesty than resourceful? Where do they come up with this stuff?
RSA
I like this one:
“Government” is a pro-liberal term? WTF?
Kryptik
Frank Luntz, I’m assuming.
itsbenj
anyone who can pen the sentence fragment “…the conservative word ‘volunteer’…” should seriously consider putting the pen down. or jabbing it into their neck…
dmsilev
Brings inescapably to mind some of the scenes in _1984_, where Winston and some of his coworkers at the Ministry of Truth are discussing the features of Newspeak.
Memo to Conservapedia: _1984_ was a cautionary tale, *not* an instruction manual.
-dms
Brandon
I am still standing by my previous claim that there is nothing new, newsworthy or even mockworthy at all to read, write about or discuss today.
Alex S.
I don’t know why they do this at all. Books are liberal, also.
Noonan
Um
How do I get access to this?
Sentient Puddle
We have. Still, there’s so much wingnut in it to pick through. And mocking them is always fun.
Tom Levenson
This stuff makes me so happy.
I can’t think of a more happily self-condemnatory project than this one, and none better designed to illuminate the moral poverty of our friends on the right.
Have at it, shrewd ones.
flounder
DougJ,
[reposted from below…thought you would get a kick out of the stupidity]
I don’t know if you still check out the Kaplan Test Prep chats, but you should sit down, pour yourself 2 fingers of something stiff and read this one, I believe it signals the end of the republic:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/12/01/DI2009120103274.html
P.S. I was writing this BEFORE the question/answer in which Kaplan’s alleged financial/economy “journalist” promoted Amity Shlaes crap book. Seriously.
On the post topic, I think this Bible revisionism stuff has to do with that Winger mythology stuff Atrios talks about. They need to make the Bible consistent with the mythology because the mythology has gotten more confusing than all the contradictory stuff in the Bible.
Hunter Gathers
I assume somewhere in the rectal area
OT – Nelson will filibuster HCR if language similar to Stupak isn’t in it. The Helmet Head brigade strikes again.
Tom Levenson
arrgh. I am wordpress’ comment editing function. Please let me out.
Trinity
DougJ…your post titles are the lulz. :)
Brandon
Case in point about this being old news, the Conservative Bible Project was discussed before by John way back on Oct. 5.
For the love of god, will something interesting fall into my lap today or else I am going to have to write the boringest memo of my life this afternoon. Pretty please?
licensed to kill time
I guess when you are used to selectively reading the bible it’s not much of a stretch to selectively rewrite it as well.
Dave
Only Conservatives could claim the Bible is the Word of God, handed down UNCHANGED from his celestial mouth to our ears…and then decide they need to change everything about it because it’s not conservative enough.
Fuck me dead. We need tests for voting and office-holding. The fact one of these slope-browed morons cancels out my vote is maddening.
Supt. Chalmers
That stupid liberal bible doesn’t mention cutting the Estate tax even once! Stupid liberal Jesus.
Kennedy
Has anyone played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 yet? There is a mission titled “WOLVERINES!”
Zifnab
You have to take it in context. They’re trying to “improve” the Bible, so they need to find as many flaws as possible. And if you’re just going to fine tune the English, why not? There will be a lot of haggling over the term “kill” versus “murder” and they’ll probably have to dumb down what it is to “covet” and censor the term “beget”.
But what is really hilarious is…
When the term “shrewd” was outclassed by the term “resourceful” by virtue of being less conservative.
Conservative is now the measure of all things. They might as well just change the term to “Perfect”.
Rick Taylor
The bible has numerous free market parables?
Rick Taylor
And who knew, that using terms like “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God” was liberal?
cleek
someone doesn’t know what “logic” means.
Midnight Marauder
This is (one of) the part(s) that amazes me. Are these not names/terms that the LORD ALMIGHTY HIMSELF uses to describe…himself? I know it’s been a while since I’ve cracked open “The Good Book” and even longer since I’ve been to church or whatever, but am I wrong about this? Does not His Great Benevolence refer to himself as “Lord God” repeatedly? Doesn’t his own son/HIMSELF say all those names constantly? I mean, I know these people are not serious in any way, shape, or form, but this is just crazy.
And I will probably continue to be astonished every time I read a story about this crazy, crazy “project.”
Xecky Gilchrist
I wholeheartedly support this project. Any wingnut who spends time working on it isn’t working to cause damage in the real world.
WereBear
Proof, if more is needed, that modern conservatism has become no more than a shared fantasy world, about as tethered to reality as arguing about Spiderman canon, and far less humanitarian.
Ash Can
Too bolshie. The correct term is “peasant,” although “serf” is also acceptable.
In all seriousness, the long and short of it is that they live in their own world, with their own rules and their own language. Those of us who don’t need our meds adjusted wouldn’t understand.
Mako
Regardless of what you may have heard about Jesus opposing usury and supporting the poor, the fact is, Jesus was an invisible-hand free-market capitalist. He disliked jews and muslims and shopped at walmart. If he was here today, Sarah Palin would already be president, and we’d be drillin’ in the arctic. HTH.
Comrade Dread
Laborer reminds them of Labor which reminds them of unions which are evil liberal organizations who want things like a vibrant middle class, health care, and humane working conditions.
Also, laborer is close to worker, as in “Workers of the World Unite”
I’ve also heard that Jesus told a rich man to sell all of his goods and give them to the poor, but I already know I’m no longer a conservative from what all of my GOP friends tell me, so I’m pretty sure my bible must be the hippie version.
Midnight Marauder
@Rick Taylor:
I’m guessing that God is probably a little surprised by that one, as well.
Mark S.
I know I’m trying to unravel a ball of stupidity here, but volunteer does not convey the same meaning a laborer. Those parables about workers in the fields don’t make any sense if they are doing it for free.
PeakVT
If the rightards are so worried about mis-translation of the Bible why don’t they learn to read it in the original Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek?
me
@Rick Taylor: It’s all in the Gospel of Supply Side Jesus.
Allan
They’re tampering with the sacred text of the Bible, every last American English word of which was dictated by God? Why don’t you just open the Ark of the Covenant while you’re at it?
Does this movie end with the Nazis getting their faces melted off? I love happy endings.
Comrade Dread
I look forward to seeing the seventy page addition to the Sermon on the Mount whereby Jesus extols the virtues of selfishness and individuality and recommends that his followers not go forth and spread the gospel to all nations, but isolate themselves in a small valley waiting for world to miss them.
Hunter Gathers
And spotteth twice they the camels before the third hour. And so the Midianites went forth to Ram Gilead in Kadesh Bilgemath by Shor Ethra Regalion, to the house of Gash-Bil-Betheul-Bazda, he who brought the butter dish to Balshazar and the tent peg to the house of Rashomon, and there slew they the goats, yea, and placed they the bits in little pots.
Here endeth the lesson.
Lev
Used to be that the fundies were all about taking every word of the Bible literally.
Now, they want to take the parts of the Bible that they like literally, except the ones they don’t like.
Congratulations, fundies! You’ve just justified every single interpretation of Christianity you don’t like! The Unitarians utter a shout of joy!
Leelee for Obama
@Supt. Chalmers: There is a group of young people (home-schooled), recently attending Patrick Henry College?, who believe that the Bible is against property tax. I saw that on a documentary about the school and its catering to the home-schooled God-botherers. Not as famous as Liberty or Regent, and therefore, to me, more dangerous.
@Kennedy: There is also a military unit or camp in theater, can’t remember which, named Wolverine. I chuckle and then shudder every time it’s mentioned.
@Trinity: This one is the funniest I can remember, and Doug is good.
@licensed to kill time: This reminds me of childhood, when I wasn’t supposed to read the King James version, only the Douay, because those Protestants and their King had messed up the meaning of the inerrant word, or something. Always liked the Shakespearean version better, so, always in trouble. To say nothing of the fact that King James himself was a closet Catholic, which meant something very different back them!
chopper
i can’t wait for this new bible to become a major motion picture starring sylvester stallone as an M-60-toting jesus.
pharisee: who are you?
jesus: I’M YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE! (ratatatatat…)
Soylent Green
Tim Kreider nailed this years ago.
Jesus vs. Jeezus
Hunter Gathers
@me: Supply Side Jesus is under indictment for securities fraud.
morzer
The sad thing is that the people behind this nonsense are clearly grotesquely ignorant. To offer one example: “logos” (translated as “word”) in John has a wide range of meanings, but “truth” simply is not one of them. It can mean “word”, “account”,”argument”, “reasoned discourse” and, in a semantic shift that goes back to Heraclitus and is inherited by the Stoics, something like “underlying structure”. Truth, on the other hand, would be “aletheia” or perhaps “to alethes”. For anyone wishing to dig deeper:
http://www.bible-researcher.com/logos.html
As for their witless assault on “shrewd” – what happened to “a shrewd judge”, a “shrewd choice” or “shrewd advice”? Could their semantic violence be based on the recent right-wing rejection of shrewdness for ideology?
chopper
i’ll say one thing, if you remove all the DFH stuff from the new testament it’ll make a nice read. all 3 pages of it.
thomas
Dave @ 17 – you are correct sir.
Also, I gotta wonder what they plan on doing with all that so-shall-ist stuff in that ‘Sermon on the Mount’ thing??
Brandon
I will give this thread one piece of credit. It did make me go over and read Jesus’s General for the first time in years.
Soylent Green
This one works.
Jesus vs. Jeezus
Ash Can
@Midnight Marauder:
Hey, these people know what God really meant to say in the Bible, as opposed to those raggedy-ass desert-dwelling nobodies who wrote all this stuff down ages ago. Who, I understand, tended to be Jewish on top of it. Now, how could a bunch of Jews write a proper Bible in the first place, I ask you?
Midnight Marauder
@Hunter Gathers:
Supply Side Jesus sounds like a lexicon entry waiting to happen.
mellowjohn
“…what’s wrong with laborer?”
what’s wrong is that there is no corresponding mention of gallant capitalists. also nothing about objectivism. and they completely ignore ayn rand and ronald reagan.
techno
Nothing surprises me about the “conservative” Bible project. I was raised in a parsonage and had memorized more than 2000 Bible verses by the time I was in sixth grade. Trust me on this, there is NO way a person can believe the Bible and be a “conservative.”
It’s no wonder these lying clowns have to change the Bible. I am sure their next project will be to claim that the “protest” in Protestant doesn’t mean what everyone would believe.
Leelee for Obama
My comment at 37 is in moderation? I didn’t use any proscribed words…are there new ones?
While I wait, I’m reading an laughing my buns off-this tread is too, too, full of win!
Can anyone get a screen capture of Bernanke being questioned by “Dick” Shelby? I swear, he’s giving him the finger!
Midnight Marauder
@Ash Can:
“Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!”
SpotWeld
Conservapedia is a refuge for people who really and honestly believe that reality has a liberial bias.. and because of that they are effectivly attempting to “reject your relity and substitute my own.”
Certain things are bad: abortion, physics, college professors, pre-martial sex, Hollywood, poor people.. etc.
And they’ve devloped a whole list of key words of this bad stuff that they have to rail against in all forms.
So “choice” becuase it’s bad in context of abortion is “evil evil evil”, is also wrong in all other contexts.
So, volunteer (like the kind Obama called for in one of his speeches) is also wrong, especially in the bible.
You want to step into the malestrom of insanity over there, check out the article that “proves” how being an actress in hollywood results in greater risk fo breast cancer.
Ben JB
re: Shrewd vs. Resourceful:
My guess is that “Shrewd” sounds too Jewish to them, whereas “resourceful” sounds like a word you would use to describe the great American frontiersmen what done tamed the West.
cleek
i love that the first example of liberal bias is this line in Luke 23:34:
following a link to the NIV (New International Version) Bible page gives this awesome bit of analysis:
— quote
The NIV tends to use gender-specific pronouns in obvious places in order to avoid anticipated criticism. But the NIV (like the TNIV) embraces gender neutrality in less obvious places, as in changing the reverence to “layman” to “anyone other than a priest” in Lv 22:12:
* “If a priest’s daughter marries a layman, she ….” (ESV))
* “If a priest’s daughter is married to a layman, she ….: (NASB)
* “If a priest’s daughter marries anyone other than a priest, she ….” (NIV)
* “If a priest’s daughter marries anyone other than a priest, she …” (TNIV)
Note how this feminist neutralizing of gender opens the door to same-sex marriage, and also adds to the wordiness.
— /quote
i f’ing love that. a plain-language translation of a somewhat archaic word opens the door to gay marriage. and the committee of Bible scholars who got together and wrote the NIV were all secretly trying to weasel their liberalness (a common trait of Bible scholars) into the Bible…
paranoid, delusional, fundamentalism will be the death of us all.
DougJ
My guess is that “Shrewd” sounds too Jewish to them
These guys were Jewish, though, right? Or are they going to take that out of the Bible too?
Little Dreamer
@Ash Can:
I’m beginning to believe I might need meds if forced to live in their world.
Hunter Gathers
@Midnight Marauder: There still isn’t a definition for Bring On The Brawno! in the lexicon. I would submit one, but I’m torn between thinking if it’s a work of fiction or if Mike Judge built a time masheen and traveled 500 years into the future and shot a documentary.
Little Dreamer
@DougJ:
That is the long term goal, without removing the Jews, Christians cannot be the chosen people.
Leelee for Obama
@Leelee for Obama: I put in too many links to other posts, can someone get me out? WRT shrewd v. resourceful (c. 1851), I have always gone with shifty mother-____er (c.1950s). I think it catches the essence much better.
Comrade Dread
Of course, despite the whole King of the Jews and Son of David stuff, we all know that Jesus was a blonde haired, blue eyed, Aryan god with a short, manly hair cut.
Sarcastro
Grrrrrrr.
identify terms that have lost their original meaning, such as “word” in the beginning of the Gospel of John, and suggest replacements, such as “truth”.
The Greek word “logos” does not, has not and never fucking will translate to “truth”. A nuanced philosophical translation of the word, rather than the literal ‘word’, would be “thought made real”.
“master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” But is “shrewdly”, which has connotations of dishonesty, the best term here? Being dishonestly shrewd is not an admirable trait.
I don’t know, would “dishonest” be the best term here because it has connotations of you’re a fucking idiot?
And, btw, yes the word ‘shrewd’ had connotations of dishonesty (it derives from ‘shrew’) some 400 years ago. By the end of the 17th century it had its current favorable meaning.
The better conservative term, which became available only in 1851, is “resourceful”.
What was the word doing between 1640, when it was first attested to, and 1851? Was it on the can for 200 years?
Martin
Please use shorter, less liberal words. We know that it means ‘truth’ because anything else would be liberal, and God hates liberals, therefore it must mean ‘truth’. Or are you Volvo-sipping, latte-wearing, Birkenstock-driving egghead elitist Marxists too stupid to understand simple logic?
Leelee for Obama
@Supt. Chalmers: There is a group of young people (home-schooled), recently attending Patrick Henry College?, who believe that the Bible is against property tax. I saw that on a documentary about the school and its catering to the home-schooled God-botherers. Not as famous as Liberty or Regent, and therefore, to me, more dangerous.
@Kennedy: There is also a military unit or camp in theater, can’t remember which, named Wolverine. I chuckle and then shudder every time it’s mentioned.
Martin
@Hunter Gathers:
It’s ‘Brawndo’.
Leelee for Obama
@Trinity: This one is the funniest I can remember, and Doug is good.
@licensed to kill time: This reminds me of childhood, when I wasn’t supposed to read the King James version, only the Douay, because those Protestants and their King had messed up the meaning of the inerrant word, or something. Always liked the Shakespearean version better, so, always in trouble. To say nothing of the fact that King James himself was a closet Catholic, which meant something very different back then!
SpotWeld
For a real head shaker check out this quote from the Schlafly man himself
“From a purely scientific point of view, if there was no universal flood, then why is there limestone (which requires water and organisms) at every altitude and every part of the world? Why are there salt-water lakes far inland and at high altitudes all around the world? From a purely religious point of view, were there descendants of Adam outside of Neyman’s theory of a flood? That would cause doctrinal problems that undermine Jesus’ Crucifixion.
” (From here the talk page on the artivle about the Moon.. no, really)
J.W. Hamner
I’m sort of surprised that their objection to Luke 16 is just regarding the “shrewd” word choice and not Jesus’s clear mistake in portraying the worship of money as being somehow wrong. Presumably this is a liberal mistranslation of His parable about the evils of an estate tax.
Regnad Kcin
Fixed that fer ya, there. You betcha. Such as.
Ben JB
@DougJ: Well, the End of the History for these people is Jew-free, so why shouldn’t the Beginning of History (for them) be like-wise? Also, too.
Hunter Gathers
@Martin: Crap. Me no spell good.
Martin
@Midnight Marauder:
I’m just waiting for the day when Franken sets up a projector during his 5 minutes of debate and plays that clip in the well of the Senate.
It’s when I watch stuff like that I’m struck by just how improbable Franken is as a Senator – and how happy I’m certain to be in 6 years that he got elected.
jl
Let’s check out ‘laborer’ and see what is wrong with it for the ConservaBibletaraians.
Proverbs 16:26: The laborer’s appetite works for him; his hunger drives him on.
They should like that one.
Ecclesiastes 5:12: The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep.
Bad, that is dissing the rich, very bad.
Matthew 20:7: ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages’
Bad, the laborers are supposed to get paid after they work? And worse, they all get the same pay no matter how long they worked. Obvious commie egalitarian message, and implications of approval of a minimum wage or social insurance. Problem is that changing the translation won’t fixe that one. Maybe they should just get rid of Matthew.
Luke 10:7: ‘for the laborer is worthy of his hire’
What kind of message is that?
OK, Three strikes against the word ‘laborer’, wipe that word out.
eemom
Don’t bother yourselves too much about that DFH apostate Jesus. They’re going to run Doug Hoffman against him the next time he’s up for reelection.
Ash Can
@SpotWeld: Uh-oh. He better cool it with all that question-asking. If he asks too many questions, his head will explode, and that would make a godawful mess.
SpotWeld
@Ash Can: No worries, the guy is a laywer of the worst stripe. He only asks questions he already “knows” the answer to. No risk in filling his head with knowledge there.
Hunter Gathers
@eemom:
The question is, will Hoffman compare Jesus to a certian well known German dictator?
Roger Moore
@chopper:
Fixt. The stuff that Jesus says is all full of DFH talk. But St. Paul loved him some theology, and made long convoluted arguments about why it was OK to ignore what Jesus said. So there’s not a lot of DFH stuff to cut out of the Epistles, which are the bulk of the New Testament anyway.
SpotWeld
They are pretty much applying a line-item veto to the bible…
Leelee for Obama
As a kid, I always thought this word was deliciously double-entendre.
Chrome
Have you seen the whole list of “Conservative terms” that have apparently been freshly minted since the 1600s?
It’s fantastic:
Who knew that “doublethink” was a conservative term? F@ckin’ George Orwell, that Fascist.
And as you all know, “altruism”, “Eagle Scout”, “human rights” and “Trojan horse” are Conservative terms too. You can look it up!
Ed Drone
From the King James version:
Luke 16
Now, I see that this doesn’t even use the word “shrewd,” but instead says “wise.” And it is a parable about what it takes to “succeed” in the world. I thought we were to be “in the world, but not of the world,” but then, what do I know?
And verse 9, above, is confusing as hell to me. “Make yourself a friend of the mammon of unrighteousness?”
But then, in a later verse, it sort of gets explained:
In other words, even if you’re heaven-bound, you can’t be a cheater down here. You can’t bear false witness, even in a good cause. You can’t confuse and obfuscate, even in a good cause. You can’t steal emails and cherry-pick information from them, even in a good cause.
In other words, these religious fanatics are condemned out of their own mouths.
Ed
Little Dreamer
@jl:
That would be music to their ears, don’t ever suggest it again!
Five minutes in the corner for you.
TickTockMan
I don’t know if anybody else has pointed it out, but yes, “shrewd” has negative connotations. They’re actually right about this. The origin of the word, after all, is from “shrew.” Not a positive quality. Obviously, we use the word in English as complimentary, but it carries caveats.
While I find the entire project to be asinine, I can give some respect to people who observe the different connotations of words.
Little Dreamer
@Ed Drone:
That’s the whole crux of God’s joke. Glad you figured it out before the punchline.
Extreme Jesus Makeover
Was reading the article when the name “Schlafly” jumped out at me along with “Conservapedia” Good old Phyllis. Apple not fall far from tree. The stupid – it is strong with this one. I’m looking forward to the revision without all those dirty hippy types and no “turn the other cheek” nonsense. For good measure maybe we can finally start turning the poor into “Soylent Green”. Now that’s compassionate conservatism I can believe in.
Ed Drone
@Little Dreamer:
Oh, I read the book, so I know the pay-off.
Ed
Mark S.
@SpotWeld:
Because the earth is really fucking old and changes a lot in a couple hundred million years?
chuck
I really wonder what they’re going to do with that whole “camel through the eye of a needle” business.
Aw who am I kidding, they would probably just chop it out completely. Would, not will, because this silly little project wouldn’t serve its Rallying-Of-The-Fucktards purpose if they actually knuckled down and _did_ it.
Little Dreamer
@TickTockMan:
Actually, a shrew is just an animal doing what it does naturally, the fact that humans find the animal abhorrent is what created the negative connotation.
What’s so horrible about the shrew other than the fact that it has strange teeth?
Little Dreamer
@Ed Drone:
Most people think the book ends a lot differently. In fact, the general consensus of human society misinterprets the entire book, beginning to end.
Annie
@Comrade Dread:
Erik Prince?????
chuck
@Little Dreamer:
What’s so horrible about female dogs? Yet there’s not too many cultures that take “bitch” as a compliment. Shrews are regarded as vicious and pugnacious. See also “weaselly”, “badger”, and so on.
hamletta
You know who’s “shrewd”? Jews. Big jewy jews.
kormgar
I guess I’m missing the frame…
When did Volunteer become a conservative word?!?
Little Dreamer
@chuck:
Actually, I read somewhere that the city gate was considered the eye of the needle, and although it was difficult to get a camel through the gate, it wasn’t impossible. Much easier than getting an actual camel through the hole of a sewing implement.
Martin
@kormgar:
Shut up, that’s when.
flukebucket
@kormgar: Conservative business owners love it when you volunteer to work for them for free.
Martin
@Little Dreamer:
I think the modern wingnut equivalent would be “getting a GBU-24 through the window of a madrassa”.
HeartlandLiberal
Allow me an anecdote to exemplify the ignorant, broken thinking of the fundamentalist mind set at work here.
I read and collect comics. I have since my youth in the early 50’s. Drop by sometimes and browse through a room full of maybe 11 – 12,000 comics.
My absolute current favorite title is ‘Usagi Yojimbo’, by Stan Sakai. A marvelous, anthropomorphic character tale about a ronin samurai in feudal Japan.
http://usagiyojimbo.com/
So I buy a paperback collection for my grand-nephew down in Alabama a couple years ago. We are talking about stories full of honor, courage, myth, with some violence, but not gross and sickening, just some sword battles now and then.
Does the latter influence my Niece’s (the mother’s) decision whether to give the book to her son?
No.
Why did she return it to me after previewing it??
Because the lead character referred to a nobleman in the stories as ‘Lord’. And this might confuse her six year old child in regard to his church teachings. After all, the word ‘Lord’, as we all know, means Jesus God himself, and cannot be used to mean anything else.
I despair of any conversation with these people anymore. They live in an alternate gestalt of a universe into which no light of reason or science or objective truth penetrates anymore.
It is a fantasy Disneyland of religion for them. Nothing more. Nothing less.
wasabi gasp
I suggest shortening the word Bible to Bib, and then putting a picture of a lobster on the cover.
RememberNovember
The greatest irony- without the Jews, there would be NO Christians. From a branch of Jesse Jesus came…
I think it’s something in all the Starbucks coffee. Maybe a lack of proper neurotransmitters engaging in these ppl.
Little Dreamer
@HeartlandLiberal:
Hmmm, interesting, youth in medieval England didn’t have trouble with that sort of thing, but they also read greek and latin too.
A Lord was a person who had honorable distinction.
Mike in NC
Well, most of those dead Confederates (idolized by modern conservatives) started out in Volunteer Regiments, so there’s that twisted rationale.
twiffer
@SpotWeld: can someone throw a basic geology text book at this man’s head?
Little Dreamer
@RememberNovember:
Actually, Jesus never used the word Christians, the Apostle Paul thought it up all by himself, and a lot of what Paul taught was not in line with Jesus’ teachings at all. Technically, Christians were more like Paulians than Jesus followers, and the right wingers of today seem to be more Paulian as well.
twiffer
@HeartlandLiberal: so, wait…she was concerned the (entirely correct) usage of the word “lord” by a SAMURAI RABBIT would confuse her 6 year old in regards to his church teachings? does anyone have a brick i can smack my head against?
catclub
spotweld @ 51 typoed interestingly:
“Certain things are bad: abortion, physics, college professors, pre-martial sex, Hollywood, poor people.. etc”
I think the wingnuts would go for the pre-martial sex…
while watching war porn.
licensed to kill time
@HeartlandLiberal:
Their faith is so strong, yet so easily broken, it seems. Piecrust Piety.
Leelee for Obama
@twiffer: And here is the problem. This is why home-schooling by isolationists is so dangerous. ALL things not in line with the accepted version is heresy. People used to be burned alive for that, and some of these people probably think stopping that practice was the beginning of the end-times.
catclub
ld @ 95
Yes, and the packs on the camel are stripped off if it
does pass through.
A kind of eschatological cleansing.
batgirl
@WereBear: My wing-nut brother’s favorite quote on Facebook is “Perception is 99% of relaity [sic].”
Midnight Marauder
@Little Dreamer:
Hey! What the fuck do you think you’re doing, bringing all that documented historical fact and patently obvious logic into this discussion?! Don’t you know that a word can ONLY have a single meaning or be used to identify a single entity?
I mean, that’s the way
the CreatorJehovahYahwehLord GodBig Dawg In The Sky created language to work, right?catclub
ld @ 105
I think Paul is a cross to bear for many liberal christians.
He gets full credit for building the church
Always fun to read his passage on circumcision that repeats the word almost as much as Monty Python repeats spam.
Jennifer
@HeartlandLiberal:
I’m a liberal Episcopalian. As crazy as these people drive non-Christians, they may drive me even crazier, because I study the same things they do, and they’re just flat-out WRONG. These things are not a matter of different interpretations, they are factual errors that come from not really studying the book that they hold in such high regard.
When I feel the need to crack open the Bible, I have a version of the NIV used in seminaries. The biblical text itself is maybe 1/8th of the page, and the rest is alternative meanings and translations and interpretations. My husband refuses to even look at it, it’s so complex.
It makes me so angry that I have chosen not to have contact with a large swath of my family. They’re both hopeless and actively destructive to the peace of other people. They’d love this project. I don’t want my kids exposed to their ignorance.
Onward.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Midnight Marauder:
That’s right, MM. Which reminds me .. what are you doing posting in the middle of the DAY?
I thought you were a vampire.
Midnight Marauder
@AngusTheGodOfMeat:
I thought you knew. I’m one of them fancy Twilight vampires the kids are all raving about these days. You know, the ones with the faces that turn into disco balls when the sun hits them.
Randy P
@twiffer:
Geology is not the only problem here.
Is he aware that rainfall is fresh water?
Anoniminous
One can only be “charmed” by this methodological approach. Their use of English translations of a koine Greek text to determine the English translation is certainly an advance in New Testament Biblical Studies unforeseen by stick-in-the-mud Biblical scholars. Who, after all, needs a grounding in koine Greek, Aramaic, Latin, and Coptic when one can go direct to the original English!
Further, the intellectual life, pre-occupations, and stances of Middle Platonism are still widely active. Why only yesterday I got into a raging row over the Form of an Aeon.
And, of course, these Conservatives can readily apply their deep knowledge of current political, social, economic, and etc. life to those of the first century AD, Second Temple, era.
The parallels are clear.
Every day camel trains arrive from China to the city of Antioch along the Silk Road. And that’s only ONE of the startlingly similarities one can use for a fuller appreciation, a deeper understanding, of the text!
It’s clear this is a tremendous break-through of (Ig) Nobel Prize winning status.
AngusTheGodOfMeat
@Midnight Marauder:
Vampiry has come a long way lately. I am addicted to True Blood.
The drink, not the show.
Okay, the show too.
Bill and Sookie are just a damn cute couple. Love ’em.
catclub
randy P @ 117
“Is he aware that rainfall is fresh water?”
doesn’t quite refute the idiot, since he talks about salt water lakes at high altitude.
Now, you and I might know that with a suitable application of time and evaporation, ‘fresh’ water ain’t so fresh, but that
will not convince the bible thumpers. The suitable application of time might exceed the 4004 BC limit.
Little Dreamer
@Anoniminous:
Is there an Ignobel Prize?
twiffer
@Leelee for Obama: i can see that. it’s just…usagi yojimbo is a rabbit. 6 year olds can tell fantasy from reality, though i suppose in cases like this.
then again, we are dealing with people who claim, with apparently a straight face, that logic and a study of science lead them to young earth creationism. people who claim limestone in mountain ranges can only be due to a universal flood. people who are, well, fucking idiots.
it all just makes my head hurt.
Anoniminous
@Little Dreamer:
And Jesus having looked but a short time upon the Google – and found it good – said unto them, “Yea verily I writeth unto thee. Goeth thou fortheth and readeth:
http://improbable.com/ig/
and thou will gain much.
Even unto the next generation.
twiffer
@Randy P: i made the mistake of following that link and reading some of the posts. brain still reeling. i’m not even going to try to understand anymore.
Little Dreamer
@catclub:
To get a real understanding of who the man really was, you should try this site. Read the chapters listed at the bottom of the page. Mindblowing stuff. I have a new understanding of Paul since I started reading this about five years ago.
I don’t subscribe to the religious beliefs of the site owner, but I find his research very interesting.
Little Dreamer
@Anoniminous:
Interesting, I used to drive around in an automobile with the license plate “Igg 1”. Hmmmm! Might you know a certain group of people who travel in Colorado theatre circles?
Joe Max
The Gospel of John was written in Greek, and the word “word” in Grek is “logos”, and has a very important meaning in religious philosophy. Replacing it with “truth” is idiotic.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” – John 1:1
http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/theogloss/logos-body.html
morzer
Hyphens are a clear sign of an elitist liberal radical Marxist mentality also too. We in the Allassker
Indepund.. Indepind… Indippedin..Indippedinpunditry... Freedom Party don’t have any use for such unMurikan devices.Anoniminous
@Little Dreamer:
Sadly, no.
(Hey! That would make a good blog title, wouldn’t it? :-)
libarbarian
They were ALWAYS picked and chosen the parts of the bible they take literally.
Hence, Adam and Eve are literal but the Beast with 7 heads and 10 horns upon each is head, of course, the U-f@cking-N
twiffer
@catclub: the flood was supposed to have been caused by 40 days and nights of rain. one could be charitable and claim he believes the deluge raised the sea levels, but it would still be diluted. particularly as young earth means static earth. if you reject tectonics, then you must believe that all is was as it is now. forget about the observed data that is contradictory. so, this universal flood must have raised sea levels by, at the very least, 10,000 feet. or more. i’d have to look it up, but i don’t think there is enough water, in any form, on the planet to do that.
Shell
Wow, who knew Marx, Lenin, secretly developed a time machine to let them travel back and insert all them damn commie words.
DBrown
These losers do have a point on the Lord thing.
From the Wiki on the name Yahweh -Although this vocalized Hebrew spelling יַהְוֶה is found in no extant Hebrew Manuscript, several English Bibles use the spelling “Yahweh” in the Old Testament. This rendering, as with many religious and scholarly issues, remains the subject of ongoing debate.[2] The start of the name Yahweh (Yah-) remains widely accepted but disagreements continue on the ending (-weh).
Seems the Jews do use Lord or G_d or a few others but just using the word Lord would be correct. hence less confusing if you want to ‘pronounce’ the Hebrew word ‘ יַהְוֶה ‘. This word’s correct pronunciation has been lost and even if known, Jews could never use it until the Temple is rebuilt (and even then, only the high priest could say it or so according to the Wiki.)
twiffer
@Joe Max: not to mention, and i say this as an atheist, the idea that all existence is created from a Word is both profound and poetic. makes everything a story.
Little Dreamer
@DBrown:
That’s a Levite bait and switch tactic.
Wag
…and therefore, complete ananthema to the Fundie mind.
chrome agnomen
well, FSMdamnit, i had to look.
translation of matthew, chapter 1, verse 2. they retranslate ‘begat’ as ‘was the father of.’
the explanation? “the passive ‘was the father’ emphasizes the ancestry.”
‘was the father” is passive now?
so much potential win here, but on the other hand, it’s time you’ll never get back.
idiots. new, stronger words need to be coined for concepts like ‘scorn’.
Origuy
From Webster’s New Riverside University Dictionary (real paper, I’m an antique.):
shrew [ME shrew, villain < OE screawa, shrewmouse]
shrewd [ME shrewed, wicked < shrew, rascal]
Oh, and James the Sixth and First (as they say in Scotland) was rumored at the time to be a closet Catholic, and his wife certainly was, but after the disclosure of the Powder Treason, came down hard on Catholics, whether they had anything do do with Guy Fawkes or not.
Origuy
Italics fail. Hope that fixed it.
Origuy
Trying again. I can haz preview?
Regnad Kcin
italics without end
unto WordPress be the glory
Brent
@Martin:
Volvo-sipping, latte-wearing, Birkenstock-driving egghead elitist Marxists too stupid to understand simple logic
you wins the intertoobs, I choked on my peanuts so hard I wish I had a Japanese prime minister to toss on.
Xanthippas
We have the makings of some fine young Soviet political officers here.
Mark S.
Does that work?
Mark S.
?
chopper
italicized for emphasis.
Mark S.
One more try or I’m out of tricks.
charles johnson
“December 3rd, 2009 at 3:05 pm Reply to this comment
DougJ
My guess is that “Shrewd” sounds too Jewish to them
These guys were Jewish, though, right? Or are they going to take that out of the Bible too?”
Having lived in the South long enough to have been told, directly, that if Jesus were alive today he damned sure would be an american, I can only assume that Conservapedia will get around to replacing Jew with “Pre-Christian” or something like that.
me
@Xanthippas: До свидания товарищ.
Jab Facecrunch
I just hope they manage to fit the whole Book of Rand in there this time. I know adding “Atlas Shrugged” to the Bible will make it a pretty lengthy tome, but that’s a small price to pay for obeying the edicts of Supply-Side Jesus.
Anoniminous
Sorry Xanthippas but the Soviet Union collapsed some time ago and the whole Red Army Commissar Political Officer thing went with it.
(I read books rather than burning them. That’s how I know this kinda thing.)
Anoniminous
this work?
CalD
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess someplace other than a dictionary. Maybe we should all pitch in and buy them one.
grumpy realist
/
All right, who dropped the italics syrup over everything?
start italics / end italics?
Darkrose
He wasn’t very good about the “closet” part where things other than religion were concerned, what with all the pretty male “favorites”.
grumpy realist
italics begone!
*ahem*…well, yes, back to the Bible. Considering how many many years the Christian world really hated usury and went for communal activies and organizations (see: most of Western history), the Conservatopia attempt to re-write the Bible along their Supply-side Jeezus ideas strikes me as, well, nothing more than absolute heresy.
And I’m not even a Christian!
LD50
That is so passé. Full-on American Jesus crazies are now convinced that the King James translation was the FIRST Bible translation, and the ONLY reliable one.
charles johnson
Don’t start no italics, it won’t be no italics.
mcddjj
@SpotWeld: So is this the birth of Political Correct Conservative speech?
r€nato
@Mark S.:
It makes sense if you own the fields.
r€nato
I was always taught that the KJV Bible was God’s Officially Licensed Version™.
Now it turns out King James was a bleeding heart liberal after all, and early 21st century conservatives will write the definitive version of the Bible, and the meaning of the language they use (as well as the language itself) will remain unchanging forever and ever. Just like the original version of the Bible itself.
morzer
@charles johnson:
I think the correct term is proto-Christian, not pre-Christian.
Platonicspoof
Know ye, all ye sheep mocking heretics and infidels, the first sign of the Apocalypse shall be a scourge of Italics upon the scriblings of thee all.
Platonicspoof
The second sign shall be hordes of misspelled scribblings.
Tropical Fats
Blessed are the rich, for they own the earth.
Blessed are the war makers, for they totally kick ass!
Blessed are those who persecute in my name.
drkrick
Just in case it hasn’t already been pointed out, these terms are used to translate DIFFERENT WORDS in the Greek or Hebrew. It’s hard to understand how anyone who takes the Bible seriously could get behind this project, or why someone who doesn’t would bother.
canuckistani
Does anyone else wonder if Andrew Shlafly hates his mother so much that he is willing to spend his entire life on an elaborate troll-spoof of her beliefs?
I’d believe it. I know I hate her.
RSA
I’m a bit late getting back to this, but I just remembered having written a Biblical pastiche on an economic topic last year on my blog. (I can’t see how this can be done seriously, even by conservatives.) Here goes:
For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his ability; and he straightway took his journey. Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with them, and made five more talents. And likewise he that had received two, he also gained another two. But he that had received one talent became thoughtful, went to his bed pallet, lay down, closed his eyes, and reasoned with himself.
“Why is my master giving me money? He barely trusts me to go to the corner market to pick up a skin of wine when he runs out–‘Be sure that thou countest the change that is given unto thee, that thou art not ripped off,’ he says, every single time. ‘Thou art no Jeeves.’ And I never know what he’s talking about.
“The other guys, I know what they’ll do. Abdon will sink his five talents into his father’s messaging service, and they’ll be able to feed their asses better so that they can move bigger packages. He’ll pull in some good coin. And Ebed won’t blow it all at the gaming tables this time; he’s been talking about a new invention he can make (whatever an ‘invention’ is) that he thinks people will want to buy. They’re set. Next year, they’ll be saying, ‘See thou how my riches have grown!’ Yeah, your riches. But anyway, I don’t have those kinds of connections, and I’m not that smart. I need some kind of magic sack where I put money in, wait a while, and later pull out more money than I put in it.
“Uh, that sounds pretty stupid.
“No, wait, maybe it could work. My problem is that if I want to give money to a business to help them build up, and then share some of what they make, that sounds great, but I don’t know which business to give it to. But maybe there’s someone who does–I could give him my money, and split the profit with him. That sounds good… And maybe this guy would be smart enough that he could spread my cash around a bit, to a few different businesses, so I don’t have all my eggs in one basket where they all might get broken. (Hey, that’s a nice expression–I’ll have to write that down some time.)
“I wonder what would happen if a lot of people started doing this. Maybe we’d see people standing in the shadows and making bets on which of those people would make money. Weird. People will bet on anything, the number of bushels of grain to be collected in the next harvest, the height of the floodwaters next spring–useless stuff. But I’m getting a little crazy here with the speculation…
“Okay, so does this work as a magic money sack? Let’s see. I put up some money. Someone else does something with it. I wait. Eventually I get more money back than I put up. It sounds like magic to me. But it’s crazy to think that it will work for everyone, all the time. There’s no such thing as magic, and there is such a thing as risk, even if the money gets spread around. And I’m a little uncomfortable with the idea of putting up some money without the slightest notion of where it’s going and expecting some return. I mean, that’s great if it works, but can it really be so simple–if you have money and are willing to trust other people with it, you can make more money? I don’t know… Better an absolutely sure thing than the chance that I have to give my master back less than he gave me. He’s a hard man and would kick my ass.”
And so he went and digged in the earth, and he hid his master’s money in a hole.
NickM
The objection to “laborers” was bizarre. The conservative alternative must be Walmart-style “associates.” Peter wasn’t a fisherman, or a fisher of men, he was a Dead Sea Fish Products, Inc. associate.
licensed to kill time
Those goddang italians – always messing up the threads with their italics. Took my reply arrow, too.
DavidTC
WRT to ‘word’, I always wanted to translate that verse as:
In the beginning was the Precept, and the Precept was with God, and the Precept was God.
I think that’s close enough to ‘word’ to be familiar, yet be understandable. I like precept, but ‘thought’ could work, as could ‘concept’.
The current translation of that verse, strangely enough, is their only legitimate issue, but ‘truth’ is just wrong there. They’re going the entirely wrong direction trying to fix that.
grumpy realist
And if we’re going to get picky here, what about that sentence “the Elohim created heavens and earth.”
Elohim–> masculine plural on a noun with a feminine ending (Eloha). Much better translated as “the Gods” rather than “God”.
licensed to kill time
what if a person was born italic and then closed tags?
damn,didn’t work.
Platonicspoof
And thy third and final warning of the Apocalypse shal
(Your comment is awaiting moderation)
scarshapedstar
It does if you’re talking about a Jew.
scarshapedstar
(At least that’s what I read into their freakout.)
Nancy Irving
I read somewhere that these people also want to deep-six the woman-taken-in-adultery story from the New Testament–they claim it’s inauthentic, or something.
Apparently they don’t like Jesus’ resolution (“He who is without sin among ye, let him cast the first stone/Go and sin no more,” etc.)
They think the woman SHOULD have been stoned to death for her sin, and that the portrayal of Jesus as forgiving is a librul forgery.
ROTF…